What We Look For Before Choosing a Clean-Up Site

With limited volunteer time available for clean-up efforts, we can't clear every problem spot in Mwiki and the wider Kasarani area. We use a short, specific set of criteria to decide where our next effort will actually help most, rather than choosing sites at random or based on visibility alone.

Proximity to Households We Already Visit

We prioritise drainage points and waste sites near households already in our household register, since this lets us pair a clean-up with an outreach day we're already organising, rather than requiring a separate event with its own turnout.

Evidence of Actual Health Impact

A site with visible signs of standing water or repeated illness reports nearby gets priority over a site that looks untidy but shows no clear connection to household health outcomes we've actually observed.

Whether We Can Realistically Fix It

We check honestly whether a site is something our volunteers, with basic tools, can actually clear, versus a problem that would require municipal infrastructure or equipment well beyond our capacity. We'd rather redirect effort toward a smaller site we can genuinely fix than attempt a larger one we can't.

Whether Residents Are Willing to Maintain It Afterward

A cleared drain that fills back up with waste within weeks isn't a good use of volunteer time. We look for some sign that nearby residents are willing to help keep a cleared site maintained, since a one-time clean-up without any ongoing care tends to be short-lived.

How This List Gets Built

Volunteers visiting households for health or welfare reasons flag potential sites as they notice them, which feeds into a running list the Executive Committee reviews periodically to decide the next clean-up location.

An Example of How This Played Out

One site initially flagged for a clean-up turned out, on closer inspection, to require drainage work beyond what volunteers with basic tools could achieve. We redirected that effort to a smaller, nearby site instead, one we could genuinely clear rather than partially address a larger problem.

Why We Don't Chase the Most Visible Problem

The most visually obvious mess isn't always the site with the clearest health impact. We try to resist choosing sites based on how bad they look and instead focus on the criteria above, even when that means a less dramatic-looking site gets priority.

Why We Wrote These Criteria Down at All

Before we had this written list, site selection happened somewhat informally, based on whichever problem a volunteer happened to mention most recently. Writing the criteria down explicitly forced more consistency into the decision, and made it easier to explain to residents why one site was chosen over another they might have expected instead.

How a Site Selection Decision Actually Gets Made

The Executive Committee reviews the running list of flagged sites roughly once a month, weighing each against the criteria above, and confirms the choice with the volunteers who'll actually be doing the work before finalising it. This gives volunteers a chance to flag any practical concern, access, safety, timing, before a date is set.

What Happens When Criteria Conflict

Occasionally a site scores well on health impact but poorly on whether we can realistically fix it, or the reverse. When criteria conflict this way, we lean toward sites we can genuinely resolve rather than ones that would leave us attempting a partial fix to a larger problem, since a half-finished effort tends to look worse, and help less, than no effort at all.

What We'd Tell Another Group Building Similar Criteria

If another small organisation is building its own site selection process, our advice is to write the criteria down early, even informally, rather than relying on memory or momentum. It becomes much easier to explain and defend a decision once it's grounded in a specific, shared list rather than an individual volunteer's passing instinct alone, and it helps new volunteers understand the reasoning behind a choice they weren't part of making.